Prime background, work history check

Well then, chalk up another lie they just told my son-in-law within the last month when he applied. Imagine that ... and here he was told they use HireRight for the DAC check and another company.

 

One of my many duties when working in the corporate world (construction) was to gather, pull and evaluate credit & background reports and followup with references on new hires, current employees, subcontractors, and vendors. I also had to perform in-house drug testing (hair follicle, urine, & saliva). Many of our clients were well known companies & government entities that required this information in order to issue security clearances for our manpower & subs to perform the work. We had one particular well known company that required the aforementioned as well as recent driving records (within the last 3 months), fingerprinting, hair follicle testing and daily drug testing (urine) before any person was allowed on site. Intrusive, yes, but necessary for this client because of the type of operation they were involved in.

As I stated above, certain industries and clientele have a need for such thorough information so they may protect themselves and their operations. However, unless Prime (or companies like Prime) are dealing with high value and/or sensitive loads, there is not a need for a deep investigation of an individual. A simple background check, MVR, and calling of references & former employers should suffice. Many of these so-called "HR Professionals" only carry the title of HR, but they don't have the education/degree to back it up. This is why many of them outsource their HR duties like background checks, calling of references, etc. because they do not know what they're doing.

 

does prime still take your fingerprints ???

 

I've worked at Prime as a company driver for over 7 years. I think I know exactly how the pay is, for starters, and experienced. Ill dig around and see of I can find a pay chart I was given. They wouldn't commit that to paper if they were in the habit of smoke and mirrors.

if they give any generalities it's with the Lease Op pay. They work on a percentage that is set at 22% to Prime, 78% to the Lease Op.

You can call Prime what you want, but I can give you the phone numbers of my last couple students/trainees and they will confirm they started at .41/mile in a light weight tractor. That's exactly what I make with my experience while Im solo in a CONDO tractor. However, I am usually training. Hence better pay, and a condo tractor... But if I decided to hang up my instructor cap, I'd transfer into a lightweight and make .46/mile with my experience.

So either they are lowballing your son on a printed pay chart that any company driver can get from payroll or somehow they are looking at his current pay so he can be the one guy in the Lease Op fleet that gets loballed less than %78 in the standard contract everyone else gets.

 

Oh, my son-in-law didn't give them a chance to low-ball him. When he told me what they were asking for and how they were acting about it and what I thought he should do I told him to run ... fast.

I'm sure you know what -your- pay is, that's not my contention. Let's see if you can scrounge up what they gave you and then we'll compare to what they're paying some newbies today. I know what has been posted on some threads. I also know the miles are varying way too much between drivers from the research I've done. Forty-one cents isn't much when you're getting 1625 miles for the week.

 

Actually, if you have judgements (failure to pay a debt) or a bankruptcy, it will show up on a regular background check because it goes through the court system (general district & federal bankruptcy). So, even if they do not run an actual credit check, those items will show up along with any other public record on file.

 

They list "average wages" because no one get's the same loads - meaning mileage - and the fuel bonus is based on your skill at driving. However, that doesn't mean that they are "lowballing" anyone. On the company side EVERYONE is paid the same rate per mile, and the same formula is applied to their fuel usage. ChuckTaylor and I have been around Prime long enough that any variation in starting rates would stick out like a sore thumb in our conversations with other drivers. The starting rates are hard and fixed, and the mileage points where drivers earn a rate increase are also hard and fixed.

As far as the background checks are concerned, yes they use Hire Right... all of the larger carriers use them, as well as the PSP report generated by the FMCSA. They use the SSAN verification tool that the US government provides... does that mean that a company is "farming out background checks to the US government?" Hardly. However, an internal investigation is done by the in-house people on all applicants using the information collected from these sources as well as what is collected by sources generated internally. That is not "farming-out the background check to outside companies." It's ludicrous for anyone to even imply that they rely only on outside sources.

In this industry a carrier can't just leave it to other companies for the simple reason that if something is missed by a minimum wage employee at some jerkwater investigation company, the liability in the case of a negligent hiring lawsuit can be catastrophic. The background checks ARE done in-house.

 

I didn't claim Prime was low-balling anyone. I claimed the company is requiring W2s as an underhanded tactic to secure information that is none of their business whatsoever.

In addition to the "low-ball" term, I don't know where you got "farming out background checks to the U.S. government" as that didn't come from me, either. HireRight IS an outside company, is it not? I am aware many mega companies use them ... Prime uses them too but another poster said they did everything in-house and I simply reiterated what my son-in-law was told and provided in the paperwork he received from Prime, that Prime uses an outside company for a background check.

Whether other mega carriers use HireRight or not (we know many do) is irrelevant in the scope of my words. It's not "ludicrous to imply" some companies, not unlike Prime, rely on outside sources as there are more companies NOT using HireRight than using them. Once you get down to smaller carriers (and there are many more of them than large carriers), a plethora of them do their own in-house background checks. Using HireRight is NOT using an in-house system by any definition of the word.

In fact, some carriers and fleets refuse to even look at HireRight because of the patterns of systemic abuse prevalent in the DAC reporting methods and retaliatory tactics used by unscrupulous companies to screw a driver's record up. Taking it a step further, there are many drivers, some even on this forum, who agree that it's HireRight and the DAC reports constituting the "jerkwater investigation company" for some of the reasons I just mentioned.

There are smaller fleets, and some larger ones, not using these methods and simply using good sense, i.e. properly verifying employment and driving records, and several of these companies have safety records and stellar employee drivers that these mega fleets could only dream about but will never attain because of the manner they do things and how they treat people.

Even a captive slave will eventually soften toward their captor over time as they become dependent on them. It is estimated 43 percent of Americans are between a "dependence" and "bondage" stage as described by Alex de Tocqueville in his book Democracy in America.This mindset and acceptance continues as society continues to allow corporations to do what they will.

 

The fact is that if the larger carriers DON'T use all sources available, they can be accused of a negligent hire in the case of an accident lawsuit. I am that poster, and those background checks using information gleaned from many sources ARE done in-house. The W2s are used as verification of employment whenever there is a question of the authenticity of a claim of employment. It would be quite simple for someone with a DOT reportable fatality accident to gin-up a list of false employers, have people answer a phone and say, "Yup he worked here," - and that has happened in the past. A fake W2 takes quite a bit more effort, and it's a felony to do something like that. And if you're implying that I'm some sort of shill or "slave" you are quite mistaken.

 

Total shill